Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Author of the First Feminist Bible

Like many leaders of her time, Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s feminist convictions grew out of her antislavery activities. On their wedding trip in 1840, she and her husband traveled to London for an antislavery convention where the Quaker radical feminist Lucretia Mott was refused admission. In the following years, Mott and Stanton became friends. In 1848, with the help of Mott and two other Quaker women, Stanton organized the event that marks the beginning of the American feminist movement, the first Woman’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York.

By that time, Stanton had borne three of her eventual seven children. Taking pleasure in her children, friends, food, parties and games, she defended her large size and sensuality at a time when neither was considered respectable. She was never anti-male, but believed that if men and women were truly equal, society would achieve a beneficial balance.

Around 1850, she formed a friendship with Susan B. Anthony that was a working partnership in activism. In time, Anthony—neither as caustic nor as controversial as Stanton—became the most widely recognized leader of the woman suffrage movement. But Stanton had always been interested in more than votes for women. In the 1880s, Stanton turned her attention to theology. She believed religion was one reason women accepted traditional views on marriage, divorce and birth control instead of thinking for themselves.